Omg, Yes! Asio!

[WorldIndustries]

For anyone who doesn't have a low-latency sound card, and wants one, but doesn't have the cash...

www.asio4all.com

This will eliminate ALL your latency troubles. It's basically ASIO emulation.

It is a godsend for me. And it actually works! I have virtually no latency at all, it's amazing, and my sound card was worthless to me, I was gonna go buy a 150 buck PCMCIA Audigy card...


EDIT: As a note to those who download, there is a virus warning, but the program DOESN'T contain any actual viruses. Just letting you know

 

[Crysalis]

Ya... I've used that for years. Excellent.

 

[003]

For anyone who doesn't have a low-latency sound card, and wants one, but doesn't have the cash...

Sound cards that support ASIO don't have to be expensive. Pick up an M-Audio Revo 5.1 on ebay for ~$40, for example.

Also, as an alternative to asio you can also use kernel streaming, which I think all sound cards should support.

EDIT:
Just curious, what you are wanting low-latency operation for?

 

[WorldIndustries]

Audio recording, real-time VST plugins, Amplitube, stuff like that.

 

[alexsabree]

umm... whats asio and does it support my sound card?

 

[WorldIndustries]

ASIO is is super-low latency audio input/output... It's basically only use is for real-time effect processing (IE; using it as a guitar preamp, without ASIO, there would be a near half-second delay), and sound recording applications.

Only higher-end sound cards support ASIO, but there are ways to make ASIO work on sound cards that don't support it, such as the program I posted above.

 

[003]

The X-fi does support ASIO. It can also be used for audio playback if you are critical about the sound, as it bypasses the Kmixer.